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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

roadtrip to texas

i sat in the car hiccupping. my hands clutched the steering wheel. translucent knuckles evidence of my anxiety. i had just left the fed ex office. i had just left another pile of important papers with a young man who looked no older than my 8th grader and no more responsible than my 1st grader. sorry, that reads very judgmental. i think it was the fact that he wouldn't make eye contact and was more serious about the gum he was snapping than my questions about delivery method. okay. that really has nothing to do with this posting. i wasn't sitting in the car hiccupping because of the juvenile fed ex employee, but because i had just smacked into, yet again, my own control issues.

half-crazed woman at counter clutching immigration paperwork. me. skeptical and determined. it needed to be sent to texas and the plan was to fed ex it - no matter the amount. he quoted me prices and all i could think was what would rick say if i called him from the car and told him i was already half way across alabama and planning to hand deliver it myself. just wanting to be sure and all. i figured it would be okay. he could easily handle the kids for the weekend. sure we had multiple soccer games, events to attend and projects to complete. but perhaps i could enlist the help of a neighbor or something. i mean, i saw lots of positives to my hand delivering these precious documents. maybe i could show up with a starbucks for this man sitting in the immigration offices of lewisville texas. i could bring some pictures of zuzu. i could tell him her story. i could read him a few blog entries. i would even promise to take his picture and add it to her blog....use his name...send him a christmas card. whatever.

whatever it would take to ensure these papers...this story... would be handled quickly, efficiently, and with the utmost of care. i was drowning in my great need to control and manage this situation. silly woman. where was my trust? why don't my actions match my words. i say all the time we are trusting God with this story, with this child, with her life, with her health, with the finances, with the decisions, with the details....i say that and yet i stand in an atlanta fed ex office and consider a road trip to texas.

"Is not God in the heights of heaven? and see how lofty are the highest stars!

Yet you say, 'What does God know?'...

Yet it was He who filled their houseswith good things."

~ Job 22: 12, 13 and 18

God in heaven. me in atlanta. yep, that about sums up the utter ridiculousness of my worry, my control, my meddling. shameful, i know. it seems i can't help myself. the thing about adoption is there is always something else to do, but in between these doings, there is a lot we can't do. a lot we have to just let alone. let be. the translucent knuckles of the hiccuping woman in the car have a hard time unwrapping themselves from the process and paperwork and plan.

further on in this same chapter it reads:

"Submit to God and be at peace with Him; in this way prosperity will come to you.

Accept instruction from His mouth and lay up His words in your heart....

the Almighty will be your gold, the choicest silver for you." ~ Job 22: 21 and 25

so, for today, i will trade in my translucent knuckles, my anxious thoughts, my controlling ways. i will trade in my hiccups and my desperate plans. i will trade in my insecurities and my weakness, and i will replace it, at least for today, with His good things. with His gold and with the very choicest of silver. and i will pay the $26 to the fed ex boy and i will not drive to texas...i will drive home.

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............bella grace

"do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, 'give them up!' and to the south, 'do not hold them back.' bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth ---everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made."~ isaiah 43: 5-7

Hope is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soul,And sings the tune without the words,And never stops at all,And sweetest in the gale is heard;And sore must be the stormThat could abash the little birdThat kept so many warm.I've heard it in the chilliest landAnd on the strangest sea;Yet, never, in extremity,It asked a crumb of me. ~ emily dickinson

"if we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin." ~ turgenev